One Minute Out Page 34

  “Did they shake you, or did you just fook it up?”

  “Dunno. They didn’t see me, dead certain of that, but I can’t say there wasn’t someone back behind me I didn’t recognize who alerted them.”

  “All right,” Verdoorn replied. “Bring the ring in tighter. If Gentry is here at all, he’ll come to the bladdy market. I want all Lions within one hundred meters. If CIA is here, we’ll be ready for them, too.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Kenneth Cage stood in the lobby just off the sales floor of the palace where the market was being held. Behind him, in the darkened great hall, four of the women had already been paraded across a small riser, surrounded by buyers, then sold off, each going for over one million euros. A fifteen-year-old Ukrainian, a twenty-two-year-old Bulgarian, a nineteen-year-old Macedonian, and a sixteen-year-old Romanian were already the property of four different criminal organizations, and would soon be shipped off to Dubai, Frankfurt, Bangkok, and Stockholm, where they’d be condemned to a life of servitude.

  There was a break in the action now while the next four were prepared to go on the block, so Cage and some of the buyers from a group of Gulf states stood in the lobby chatting and drinking whiskey.

  Hall stood close by his charge, but his attention was partially focused on listening in to Verdoorn’s men on his earpiece as they discussed a potential new threat.

  During a pause in the conversation in the lobby, he leaned into Cage’s ear. “Sir, Jaco’s team has identified a pair of unknown men in the area. We need to—”

  “Is one of them that Gentry prick?”

  “No, sir. But they think—”

  With a dismissive wave, he said, “Jaco will handle it. Don’t bother me while I’m working again,” and returned to his conversation.

  Hall knew Cage was coked up, again, and he would be even more intractable than usual, if such a thing was even possible. He did not respond, only focused more carefully on his mission. If there were new unknown actors involved, then it was certainly a security issue, even if they were not related to the Gray Man.

  He took a couple steps away from his principal and spoke softly into his radio. “All elements. Keep it tight out there. White Lion thinks there are possible CIA officers hunting for Gentry in the area.”

  One of his men radioed back. “What are the ROEs?”

  Hall felt the stomach acid gurgling inside him. “The rules of engagement are don’t engage. We aren’t shooting it out with the fucking CIA. They won’t be here for the principal, they’ll be here for Gentry. Stay out of their way and maybe they’ll nab him.”

  If I could be so lucky, Hall thought.

  * * *

  • • •

  Chris Travers moved through the crowded restaurant calmly, as if he were making his way back to his table from the john. Several steps behind him, Ground Branch officer Pete Hume stepped out of the door to the kitchen, moving more quickly. Travers had made it through the kitchen undetected, but Hume was spotted by a cook, who yelled at him but quickly turned his attention back to the chicken marsala he was plating, no doubt annoyed at the tourist who’d taken a wrong turn heading to the bathroom and wandered through the kitchen.

  Outside the restaurant both men turned to the south and picked up their pace even more. The SDR had consumed several minutes, and since they had no idea how long their target would be at his location, they knew it was time to haul ass.

  * * *

  • • •

  The guy I’ve pegged as the Director of the Consortium has been inside the building next to the casino for nearly thirty minutes. A couple of guys I take for mafia security men are walking around in front of the gate and the casino next to it, but I haven’t detected anyone else from my admittedly limited vantage point here above the nightclub.

  I take a few seconds to rub my eyes, then clean off the lenses of my binos. But before I can bring the optics back up to my face I see new movement, close, just outside the window in the alleyway running left to right in front of me.

  A pair of men walk below my position, but they don’t turn up the passageway towards the casino and the market building. Instead they glance idly in that direction, but continue along the alley that runs from my left to my right.

  I make them as suspicious immediately. They are slick enough, not showing any intensity in their actions that make for an easy tip-off, but there is something about their bearing and dress that tells me this isn’t a pair of rando tourists who wandered off the main streets and down a quiet alleyway.

  Nope, these two are in the game.

  I can feel it.

  After they pass out of view from the market, one of the men brings his hand up to his mouth and speaks into it.

  And now I know that these guys are in comms, which means there will be more out there.

  They don’t look like the rest of the mob goons, so I’m wondering if these are Consortium operatives sent out into the neighborhood to look for me. There is one other possibility, but I immediately discount it, certain that it can’t be.

  Can it?

  I rise from my position for the first time in an hour, and I move to another room up here on the second floor above the nightclub, on the opposite side of the building. Here I find a window that looks out over a street one block to the west. It is well lit and there are dozens of men and women in view, but after scanning slowly back and forth for a few seconds, my eyes lock onto two men in particular. These aren’t the men I just saw passing in front of the casino, but they are cut from the same cloth, moving at a steady pace through the tourists and restaurant patrons walking around.

  I bring my binos up to my eyes to focus on them, careful to remain far enough back in the room to where it’s unlikely I’ll be spotted by someone on the lookout for me.

  As I focus the binos, my eyes widen.

  And then I lower the optics. I sag back against the wall, sliding down to a seated position.

  What . . . the . . . fuck?

  I recognize one of the men below me. His name is Chris Travers, he’s Ground Branch, and I’ve spent a lot of time with him in the past year or so while I’ve been doing contract work for Matt Hanley. Chris works for SAC, formerly the SAD, my old outfit.

  The outfit run by Matthew Hanley.

  On the one hand, this confirms that Hanley has sent Agency paramilitaries here to drag my ass back home. But I’m not worried about this. No, I expected it. Counted on it, even.

  But I am worried, because I didn’t expect them to show up over here by the casino. I told Hanley I was in town to talk to someone. He would know, no doubt, of my past associations with the Alfonsi crime family, and he would rightly make the connection. But the Alfonsis’ headquarters and main turf are centralized a kilometer or more east of here. I am deep in Mala del Brenta territory now, so how the hell did Travers just happen to wander by my position?

  I know the answer. Matt Hanley told him exactly where I’d be.

  And how would Hanley know where I’d be? I’m certain I’m covert, certain my phone can’t compromise me, certain I don’t have any tracking device in or on my body, because if I did they would have been able to find me a long time ago.

  No, there is only one way Hanley could have known my exact location tonight.

  Despite his insistence that he was unaware of the Consortium, I am certain now I’ve caught him in a lie.

  He knew I was targeting them, and he knew they would be right fucking here, right fucking now, auctioning off their trafficking victims.

  I rub my hands through my hair. This isn’t the first time in my life I’ve felt the sinking feeling in my chest when someone I trusted betrays me. It’s a palpable hurt, and it sucks, but I guess it toughens me up and teaches me not to trust anyone.

  I lower my hands and look up, and my eyes narrow slightly.

  Hanley’s in
on it?

  I move back to my original overwatch position and resume scanning the forecourt of the building next to the casino for any new activity while I continue to think over Hanley covering up a multibillion-dollar sex trafficking ring. I can’t figure out how that makes any sense, but I don’t understand how I could be misreading this.

  As soon as I’m settled back in position, my phone buzzes in my pocket, and I touch my earpiece.

  “Yeah?”

  “Harry?” It’s Talyssa, her voice is strained, and I can instantly tell that something’s wrong.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  One hour earlier, thirty-nine-year-old Maarten Meyer drove his dark gray Porsche Panamera 4S up the driveway to his four-million-euro home in Aerdenhout, a woodsy and ritzy suburb of Amsterdam. He rolled into his garage, and then the door lowered silently behind him.

  He’d worked a long day at his posh office in the Museum District of the capital city, and the forty-minute drive home had given him a chance to relax and decompress. Tonight would be a quiet one: thirty minutes on his rowing machine, a home-cooked meal of herring in beetroot and horseradish, halibut with asparagus, and lemon curd for dessert.

  Meyer didn’t look or act much like a computer hacker, at least not the kind in television and movies. He didn’t have advanced degrees in computer science, and though he had a deep knowledge of programming languages and codes, there were millions on Earth better at physical hacking than he was.

  What Meyer did have, however, was a deep understanding of international private banking, the processes and the secrets, the systems and the software. And he had incredible powers of social engineering. He could convince people of things, helpful both as a banker and as a black-hat hacker, and he put these skills together, added a dash of moral ambiguity, and used this to earn tens of millions of euros, skimmed off private clients out of their offshore accounts, often without them ever noticing it was gone.

  Meyer was good at what he did and he didn’t worry much about being caught because he had an incredible team of lawyers, all of whom had their own offshore accounts where he could wire them riches they’d never have to report on their taxes. And he had connections in the federal government that kept all but the most obdurate investigators off his back.

  Meyer lived alone now, although he dated a woman in town, and his ex-wife and two children lived not far away in Arnhem. He didn’t see the kids much; he hadn’t spent the money on his divorce lawyers that he had on his criminal defense attorneys.

  Meyer finished his workout, put his halibut in the oven, then stepped into his home office on the second floor of his three-story home. He sat in front of his array of computer monitors and began perusing the markets online.

  He’d not been at this for long before he heard the doorbell echo throughout his large modern home. He glanced over at the dedicated monitor for the front-door camera and saw a small woman in a neat black raincoat standing there, a purse over her shoulder, a hand on her hip. A sensible two-door rental was parked in the drive.

  Meyer almost reached for his intercom button to ask the visitor who she was and what she wanted, but she couldn’t have looked any more harmless or nonthreatening standing there, so he didn’t bother. Deciding he wanted a closer look before he turned this stranger away, he stood and walked in his warm-ups and socks through his house, down his stairs, and into the foyer. Here he looked through the glass at the lady, who smiled right back at him.

  She was young; she looked like she couldn’t be out of college, but her clothing was sophisticated. She had bright red hair, obviously dyed, and narrow features with small brown eyes.

  To Meyer she seemed like a little boy in women’s clothes.

  Instead of opening his door, he just leaned up to the glass.

  “Can I help you?” he asked in Dutch.

  The reply came in English, which Meyer had spoken fluently since childhood.

  “Maarten Meyer? Hello, my name is Talyssa Corbu.”

  She fumbled through her purse for a moment, then took out a leather credential folio. Opening it up, she pressed it against the glass, inches from his face.

  He read the word in bold aloud. “Europol.” Making a face out of annoyance but not out of worry, he said, “All right, Talyssa Corbu, Junior Economic Crimes Analyst . . . what can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to talk to you for a moment about a matter of interest to us both.”

  Meyer looked around. He’d been arrested enough times to know how this worked. Europol didn’t send analysts to make arrests; they didn’t even send analysts out in the field. He saw no local or federal police, so he imagined this woman did simply want to talk.

  Still, he said, “Call my lawyers.”

  She shook her head, and he thought he noticed a little tremor in her throat. But with a strong enough voice she said, “Ten minutes of your time, and then I’ll leave. Trust me, you want to hear this from me, first, like this.”

  He was intrigued. He let her in, then had her follow him into the kitchen, where he checked on his fish and began whipping up a lobster sauce from last night’s leftovers.

  “You drove here from Den Hague, did you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Corbu replied. “Just arrived.”

  “And what would a junior economic crimes analyst want from me?”

  “I want a partnership.”

  He stopped whisking his eggs and looked up at her quizzically.

  “What?”

  * * *

  • • •

  The halibut was burned by the time he remembered to take it out fifteen minutes later. He’d spent the intervening period sitting across the kitchen island from the Europol woman sipping wine—he’d offered her some, but she’d declined—and listening to her spiel.

  The gist of it was easy to follow. He was under investigation by international law enforcement, his future was bleak, but she could make his problems disappear.

  She told him what she would do for him, and she told him what she wanted from him.

  As she spoke, he began to see something in the woman. A weakness, or a set of weaknesses. She was terrified to be here in front of him, unable to stop her hands from trembling, fighting to keep authority in her voice that he doubted she really possessed.

  With each passing minute this visit became stranger and stranger.

  Finally he said, “So . . . you are telling me that in exchange for me breaking into online bank transfer records, illegally, that you will keep me apprised of the investigation into me, and do whatever you can to slow or stop it.”

  Talyssa nodded but did not speak; he wondered if she was worried her voice might crack.

  Meyer hesitated, but not for long. “As I said when you showed up at my door, I want to call my lawyer.”

  “Sorry, Maarten. If you talk to your lawyer, then this deal is off the table.”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on the island, his eyes narrowed. “It’s already off the table, miss. I want no part in whatever criminal activity you are involved in. I am an honest man. All my work is aboveboard.”

  She just stared at him.

  “And,” he added, “if you don’t leave right now, then I will report you tomorrow morning to the authorities.”

  She did not get up from her seat.

  “Did you hear me?” he said again, his voice louder now. “Get out of my house.”

  He saw that his powerful voice was taking a toll on her limited reserves. Her lips trembled and her voice cracked now. “I will not leave. You will do what I ask, or I will be forced to—”

  She paused an instant, and Meyer took the opportunity to jump in.

  “Forced to what?” When she did not answer him, he repeated himself. “Forced . . . to . . . what?”

  She looked down at the island, then meekly she replied, “I’ll be forced to come back here with a friend and let him co
nvince you.” Her eyes flashed up to his now. “Believe me, I’ve seen what he can do, and you don’t want that.”

  Maarten told himself this woman was insane; she was threatening him, in his house, telling him she’d be back with a dangerous man to force him to commit a crime.

  He looked to his right on the kitchen island, and he saw the knife block. He thought if he could just snatch up one of his large blades and hold it up, then he could threaten her right back. He wouldn’t hurt her, he’d never hurt anyone, but he could intimidate her right out the door with a little push. He’d be well within his rights, because he’d asked her to leave many times, and it was obvious she was herself operating illegally.

  She wouldn’t run to the cops about him pulling out some cutlery on her.

  She shouted at him now. “Just do what I ask! Please!”

  Insane, he told himself again. Maarten Meyer decided to go for the knife, just to intimidate. But as he stood quickly he telegraphed his intentions by locking his eyes onto the block.

  Talyssa Corbu was closer, and she launched to her feet herself. She looked down the path of Meyer’s gaze. “No!” she shouted in a panic, then reached out for the block and knocked it out of the Dutchman’s reach with her forearm, causing it to spill to the floor. All the knives shot across the kitchen, then skittered down into the sunken living room behind her.

  All the knives save for one.

  A single butcher’s knife remained in Talyssa’s hand; she’d not even tried to take one as they fell, but she found her fingers wrapped around the hilt and the hardened steel blade pointed up and in the direction of the Dutch black-hat hacker. Meyer looked at her with fear, and then he turned to check behind him for something else to grab. He opened a drawer full of bakeware, then ran his hands across the counter, desperate for a weapon. He knocked over a coffee grinder and a rack of porcelain cups, and jostled a toaster, but he came up empty.